“Is the idea of the Great American Novel the worst thing that ever happened to great American novelists?” asks Malcolm Jones. “Some days it does seem that way.”
I’m not sure this writer has the right frame of mind. In fact, it probably doesn’t matter if an author hopes his work will be the next G.A.N. If it is, we will discover it for ourselves.
Complication is not the same as complexity. There are many complex works–novels, paintings, musical compositions–which are not easy to comprehend, but rich and enjoyable to work with. Like the stuff Loren Eaton writes: I mean at first you’re like Wuh?! and then you’re like Dude!! and then you’re like Whoa! That’s where it is.
Terry Teachout talks about art complicatedness in the wake of James Joyce and Bloomsday. “Are our brains simply not big enough to process the prose of Joyce or the music of Boulez?” he asks. “And if not, then why have such similarly complex artistic creations as the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock succeeded in finding an appreciative popular audience?”
Jeffrey Overstreet writes, “I finally saw The Secret of Kells. Wow. I haven’t been so hypnotized and enthralled by animation in a very long time. It’s remarkable how, in this era of increasingly lifelike digital animation and 3D, something that seems handmade can still work the most powerful magic.”
He interviews critic Steven D. Greydanus, because he’s troubled by the film. “Had I just watched a film about The Book of Kells that never once acknowledged what is written on the book’s pages?”
Our friend Dale Nelson has sent me the text of an article he wrote for the Tolkien ‘zine, Beyond Bree. I know of no way for you to get it without subscribing, but I can quote a bit here (I hope), and point you to his source material, the book Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston.
Everybody knows that hobbits love to eat good food. Tolkien’s attention to butter, bread, strawberries, potatoes, and other good things has bothered some readers. It isn’t just that hobbits display a childish greediness, but that the author seems mostly to approve of their passion for food. Moreover, some readers may feel that Tolkien makes too much of other creature comforts, such as hot baths, tobacco, and comfortable beds….
Kynaston’s book, drawing on diaries, letters, Mass Observation interviews, and other documents, superbly evokes the dismal condition of postwar Britain (1945-1951). This is the period in which Tolkien was finishing the writing of The Lord of the Rings…. The postwar austerity period became so grim that, in spring 1948, “as many as 42 percent of people wanted to emigrate, compared with 19 percent immediately after the war” (p. 249). I don’t suggest that this is the reason that departure (from the Shire; from Middle-earth itself) is such an important theme of LOTR, but I do think the theme would have a poignancy for Tolkien and his fellow citizens that readers today, especially Americans, would not suspect….
Reading Austerity Britain may prompt Tolkien’s readers to reconsider before criticizing or mocking his celebration of the creature comforts that were in such short supply while The Lord of the Rings was being written. And although the Shire is restored by the book’s end, I now see that LOTR is a book about emigration—think of the Elves’ departure, but especially of Frodo’s, at the Grey Havens. I will always think of The Lord of the Rings, hereafter, as an “austerity” book.
Algis Valiunas at Commentary writes on the legacy of Norman Mailer.
Capote showed Mailer the way by sympathetically detailing the character of one of the murderers, who like Gilmore seemed fated to suffer and inflict hell on earth; but Capote also did what Mailer did not, which was to portray the victims in their appealing humanity, to render the full horror of their final moments, and to emphasize what was lost by their deaths. With the rapt intensity of a man staring into a cobra’s eyes, Mailer gazes into and cannot look away from human malignancy, which seems the most riveting subject a writer can have and which he congratulates himself for searching so boldly again and again. If only he did not love it so.
I just wish Valiunas would stop holding back, and tell us what he really thinks of Mailer.
Caution for disturbing subject matter.
Tip: The Paragraph Farmer.
Jared Wilson has a Bible study called Abide: Practicing Kingdom Rhythms in a Consumer Culture and answers a few questions about it here. Here’s a bit from the first part of the interview:
Your book has much to say about the influence that our consumer culture has upon us as Christians. How would you describe its impact upon the being and doing of today’s evangelical church? In other words, is the influence of consumer culture hindering us from being the church, and, if so, how?
Yes, consumer culture has enormous impact on the evangelical church, and the “root” way it hinders us from being the church is how it appeals to and feeds our innate self-centeredness. Consumer culture urges us to see ourselves at the center of the universe. From self-service to self-help, everything about consumer culture makes convenience, quickness, and comfort idols that are difficult not to worship. And of course the more self-centered we are, the less inclined we’ll be to see the great need of experiencing the gospel community of the church. And consumer culture affects the “doing” of the church, as well, which is fairly evident in the way many churches not only don’t subvert consumerism but actually orient around it and cater to it. From some of the more egregious forms of marketing to the way church services are designed to the way many preachers prepare the messages, the chief concern appears to be to keep the customers satisfied.
The Washington Post thinks it is. Steven Levingston, senior editor of Book World, states Glenn Beck’s purpose for The Overton Window
A book for terrorists. Really?
In related stories on Beck’s novel, Newsweek’s reviewer only read ten pages and talks about another book in the article.
Poet Natalie Merchant talks poetry and receives praise in this four part video.
Author Martin Amis suggests “unenjoyable” novels win literary awards.
“It all started with [Samuel] Beckett, I think. It was a kind of reasonable response to the horrors of the 20th century — you know, ‘No poetry after Auschwitz’. He described it as a mistake, saying: “You look back at the great writers in the English canon, and the American, and they are all funny.”
Writers such as Dickens, Jane Austen, and George Eliot all shared that trait, he said.
I linked to Garrison Keillor’s Death of Publishing article a while back and feel compelled to link to this collection of criticism. For example, Jason Boog of MediaBistro.com observes:
“‘In the New Era, writers will be self-anointed,’ [Keillor] writes in his op-ed, which is nonsense. In this new world, many more writers will self-publish, it’s true. But every one of them will have to build an audience just like he did. These new writers will use Twitter, Facebook, podcasts, blogs, book clubs, and all the 21st Century community-building tools at an author’s disposal, just like he used the radio.”
Maud Newton also notes, “Writers of books will always need good editors. Self-publishing is not a new phenomenon. Cf. Benjamin Franklin. Yes, publishing will change, but it will also continue to exist. And so, unfortunately, will ill-informed kids-these-days rants like this one.”